


Here's To My Yesterday

by AndreaLyn



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 12:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18261413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: Michael is seventeen again and no one knows how to cope with that, least of all Alex.





	Here's To My Yesterday

“Liz,” says Max, staring in confusion at the disaster they’ve been summoned to see. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t _mean_ to,” she protests, grabbing Max and Isobel’s arms to tug them away from the lab. “Look, he came to me. He said he wanted to learn more about his cells and his DNA because he thought if we could somehow unlock the fifty years spent in the pod, he could find more information and unearth his memories if we could isolate the memories before you hatched.”

Max and Isobel exchange a wary look. “Leaving that aside,” Isobel says, pinching the bridge of her nose, “after all we’ve been through with Max being experimented on and what happened when I got Kyle to inject me, how could he think this is a good idea?”

Max keeps staring over Liz’s shoulder towards the man. “Does he remember anything?”

“We stopped talking about it when you two got here,” Liz admits. “I didn’t think your kind could _do_ anything like this. We were just trying to unlock any old memories, but instead…”

Instead, Michael has suddenly lost ten years and sits inside the lab, seventeen years old again by appearances.

“He knows who he is,” Liz says, “and his hand is still scarred and damaged, but for all intents and purposes, his body is seventeen, cellularly. I think he may be suppressing his recent memories, but for all I know, the pod extraction that we used in the serum could actually have wiped them away. I don’t _know_ , this is all new to me!”

“What do we do, Max?” Isobel asks, fraught with confusion. “Do you even remember Michael at seventeen?” 

Max scoffs and shakes his head. “Yeah,” he admits, breathlessly. “Yeah, I do. He was just a kid.”

“The good news is that he’s not panicking,” Liz says. 

“What’s the bad?”

Liz furrows her brows and gives them both a dubious stare. “That he’s seventeen and I don’t think I unlocked any memories, so I accidentally unleashed a teenage alien on Roswell?” Okay, actually, when you consider the high-stakes danger they’ve been coping with, maybe this isn’t so bad.

They peer inside the windows of the lab to see Michael flirting with one of the other lab techs, winking at her and trying his best to show that he’s got _game_ , which is kind of pathetic and amazing at the same time. 

Honestly, she’ll take this over the murdering any day.

“Clearly trying to get down to the memories on a cellular level didn’t work,” she says, shrugging like it isn’t a big deal and the science will fix what it broke. “I can reverse the serum and bring his cells back up without him having to actually age a decade, but I’m gonna need him out of here.”

“Isn’t he still genius Michael?” Max asks warily.

From inside, she hears Michael’s voice. “Maybe you can kiss it better?” and then the slap.

“Not in any helpful way right now,” Liz sighs, watching her colleague storm out muttering about handsy teenagers. Seeing as Michael looks fairly pleased with his choices, if he stays too much longer, she’s going to have to kill him like one of her lab rats and that would be a shame.

After all, he’s probably got at least another few rounds in him before he needs to be put out of his misery.

Isobel and Max have a private conversation without words, though Liz suspects there’s plenty going on in that connection of theirs. From the look on both their faces, babysitting Michael isn’t something either one of them wants to do.

“I watered your plants,” Isobel says, first to say something aloud.

“Yeah, and I picked up Noah from the airport last time he needed it _and_ helped move your couch,” Max returns. 

Liz honestly wishes she had popcorn. This might be the most entertaining thing that she’s seen since she drew back the curtain on Michael in the lab and found out that he was seventeen. She already knows who’s going to win this fight, but it’s fun to watch Max realize that fact.

“You abandoned him for ten years.”

From pebbles to rockets -- victory to Isobel (as expected).

“Fine,” Max sighs, glancing into the lab. “I’ll take him to my place, but you need to have that thing ready by tomorrow.”

“Why?” Liz quips. “You really think it’s going to be that bad?”

“No,” Max exhales, a troubled look on his face. “It’s seeing how good he is that’s going to wreck me, knowing how much we screwed everything up. I don’t know how long I can take seeing him full of hope and optimism.” 

Never mind, Liz decides. 

It turns out Max is the one with the game-ending sucker punch, because that _hurt_.

* * *

In a completely unsurprising turn of events, despite Max’s agreement to take Michael home with him, it’s all of two hours before he’s ready to fold. 

It’s two hours of Michael wanting to spend every moment with Max, cheerful and smiling and basically representing a life that they never got to have. Instead of actively deciding to let him break his heart any further by assuming they still have that tight-knit relationship, he makes a phone call.

Let it be someone else’s heart that breaks.

Or maybe, with some luck, this night doesn’t have to be as depressing for them as it has been for Max.

* * *

Alex thinks he’s been to Max’s house exactly once in his lifetime, but a 911 text from the deputy and an urgent plea for him to show up? Yeah, that’s a good enough reason to head over. He’s turning off the engine when he hears familiar voices arguing inside. 

“When did you get so old and sad? What happened to impersonating a high school senior, Michael? It was one of those moments, Michael! I’m gonna run away and follow her, _Michael_?” 

Alex takes his time walking up to the porch, not sure he wants to interrupt.

“I forgot how much of a romantic you were, but it’s _complicated_! Besides, I’m working on your love life right now.”

“Funny, I don’t have one of those, last I checked. You need a second person if you want to have a romance and that’s not exactly working out, seeing as the last thing I remember is heading off to try my luck.”

Alex rings the doorbell, intending to let the both of them know that Max’s windows and walls definitely aren’t soundproofed, but when Max opens the door for him, every word is _gone_. There’s Michael, looking young and vulnerable and it’s a sight Alex hasn’t seen in ten years.

Maybe he needs glasses, but Michael looks a lot more youthful and rejuvenated than before, not to mention _smaller_.

Max gestures inside with a helpless flop of his hand. “I know you know about us. I need your help.”

“Am I going crazy or is he…?”

“Seventeen? Yeah,” Max sighs. 

It’s like someone reached into Alex’s fantasies, pried out one of the deepest ones, and then smacked him in the face with it. He dreams about Michael like this a _lot_ , if he’s honest. He relives the museum kiss all the time and the good parts of the toolshed were material for his private time when he’d been overseas. Now, staring it in ths face, he’s gaping as it confronts him all over again, that same sweet optimism in the curve of his lips, that spark in his eyes, and the way his hair falls so perfectly on his forehead.

“Hey Alex,” Michael greets, running a hand awkwardly through his hair, biting on his lip. “Max, uh, he didn’t mention you were coming.”

_Fuck him_ , Alex had almost forgotten how crazy stupid fast he’d fallen for that. Heart pounding in his ears, he grabs Max’s sleeve. “Be right back,” he insists, and hauls Max outside to the front porch where he can yell and gesticulate freely without Michael wondering why he’s gone insane.

Also, why is he the one who’s worried about his sanity? His seventeen-year-old boyfriend is sitting inside Max Evans’ place. Boyfriend? Crush? Whatever it is, it’s unnerving and he’s beginning to understand the urgency of the text he got. 

He should ask how this happened, whether this is permanent, if Michael is okay. 

Alex doesn’t do any of that. 

“Why me?” Alex finally asks.

Max shifts awkwardly, glancing back through the window where Michael has curled up on the sofa with a notebook, head buried in it as he sketches and scribbles. “After high school, Michael and I drifted. Isobel was with Noah, and uh,” he stalls, every word sounding like he’s fighting a battle to get it out, “I realized that I don’t think either of us really know Michael. I don’t think he’s ever let himself be vulnerable around me.”

Alex shakes his head, not sure where he comes into this. “I left that summer,” he reminds Max. “Sure, I saw him a few times when I came back, but I don’t know him any better.” If anything, that’s kind of been the sticking point between them. They connected, but they never really talked. Even now that they’re making strides of progress, it’s not like it’s changed.

“His memory stalls pretty much in the middle of the last few weeks before graduation,” Max admits. “Liz is working on reversing it. They were trying to unlock pre-pod memories, but instead, we got teen Michael without his memory. We don’t know if that’s the serum or if he’s willingly choosing to forget everything else.”

_Oh_. Alex feels the force of that comment take him back a step. 

“All I know is that you’re the only person he keeps bringing up and I know how he looked at you in high school,” Max offers, shrugging like he’s apologizing for having noticed. “I need to head to the station for a while anyway. Could you keep an eye on him?”

Alex feels like the panic must be really clear on his face, but he finds himself nodding. 

“Yeah, sure. Yeah.” He almost says ‘sure’ again, but Max claps him on the shoulder and leaves him alone with a teenaged Michael Guerin.

This seems like one of the most dangerous things he’s ever done and he’s been to war.

“Hey,” Alex says when Max leaves and he heads back inside, standing in the foyer as he tries to come up with a strategy. 

“Hi?” Michael replies, and even though he’s the one in a weird situation, he sounds amused at Alex’s hesitation. “Are you okay? I mean, apart from you being ten years older than me like everyone else. You still look great, though,” he praises, his eyes doing that slow lookover that he always gives Alex that makes him heat up from head to toe.

“Stop that.”

“What, looking at you?”

“Yeah,” Alex retorts, already feeling flustered. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. “Let’s just sit. Okay? You can tell me the last thing you remember.”

He’s not exactly at his best and he rounds the couch with less grace than usual, his prosthetic knocking up against the end table. 

“Alex,” Michael says, sounding afraid, all that teasing bravado evaporating. “What happened to your leg?”

He’d hoped not to have to talk about it, but the inhuman sound of his prosthetic as he’d sat down clearly got to Michael’s curiosity. This is the last thing he wants to talk about, so he reaches out to take Michael’s hands, sitting opposite him on the couch.

“It’s not important,” he says, because he’s struggling to figure out what to do and talking about his lack of a leg is a bad path to head down. “Tell me what you remember. I understand what _happened_ , but the fact that you’ve blocked your memories…” Well, Alex gets that part too. It’s just that he doesn’t have the option to do the same. At least, not without smacking his head on a hard surface.

“The last thing I remember, I was on my way to see you at the museum,” Michael shares, but he’s staring at his hand, at the damage done, and how when Alex takes his hands, it’s obvious to see. “I don’t know what’s happened, why this looks like it does. I don’t even remember if you and I kissed or if we did anything else. Did we...?” He’s starting to panic, a frantic look on his face, and it’s in the middle of thinking about all the bad that Alex realizes what he can do to make this better.

Sometimes, just sometimes, he’s clever like that.

Alex knows what he has to do. 

He can’t undo the damage his father did, and he’s not about to have sex with a Michael who looks seventeen to take his mind off things, but he can at least make it so that the moment after their first time isn’t so badly tainted. They had that blissful and perfect space in their lives before it had been ruined and if nothing else, he can give some of that peace of mind back to Michael while Liz works on reversing the physical effects.

“We did,” Alex says. This is going to hurt like hell, but he needs to do it. Neither him nor Michael got an actual happy ending back then, but if Michael is seventeen physically and suppressing his memories, then Alex is going to take a page out of Liz’s book and make up a story that sounds better. “It was…” He laughs, when he realizes he doesn’t even have to lie. “It was epic, I think you said.”

He feels his cheeks flush with heat, heart aching with the grief of how badly he wants this story that he’s about to weave to be true.

“We had our first kiss under the stars in the museum. I thought you’d showed up there to tell me you were straight and you didn’t want to be seen around me,” he admits, his thumb sliding over Michael’s palm. “Then we went back to the toolshed and we had our first time, and our second, and what’s been argued as maybe the third,” he says. “Blowjobs count,” he says stubbornly, even if Michael doesn’t remember picking this fight.

Michael leans forward, like he’s hooked on every single word. 

Now it’s time for the story to take shape. Now it’s time for Alex to patch up a gaping wound in his own life.

“It was night when we woke up.” Night, which means Jesse hadn’t found them and Michael hadn’t driven off to find Isobel and Rosa’s body. “You kept touching me all over. You’d rub my back and press kisses to my cheek and pull me closer every time I got more than an inch away. I wanted to go again, but instead we made out for hours until you dragged me out to your truck and we went to Foster Ranch where we kept going under the stars and you told me about where you came from.”

From the shock on Michael’s face, he has to wonder if maybe he’s pushed too far.

“I did that?”

“Yeah,” Alex insists. It’s his story, he gets to make it up. “And I didn’t care. I wanted to make a joke about how the sex was out of this world, I should have known.” He reaches forward to cup Michael’s cheek, because even though he’s not about to pin Michael to the couch to relive history, he needs the touch. “You took that full ride to UNM, went for physics, and I came with you.” 

Breathing out slowly, he sits back and gestures for Michael to lie down with his head in Alex’s lap, because if he keeps doing this face to face, he might break down. 

Alex lifts his chin once Michael settles in and tries to close his eyes and picture it. “You convinced me to go to school too, for programming. We got this shitty little studio, but it didn’t matter because we never needed more than the double bed. We’d lie there all night and talk. You told me about your past in the system and I told you how my Dad used to hit me. We let ourselves be broken because we knew we could patch each other up. You graduated and came back here to work with some of the local tech companies and I consult.”

It's almost a perfect story. 

It just needs that happily ever after. “We’re in love. We have been since you kissed me at the museum.” Funny how he got right back around to the truth after all.

Michael tangles his fingers with Alex, the pinky jutting out and reminding him of how badly broken they still are, because Alex’s white lies won’t change that.

“When I’m around you,” Michael says, “everything is calmer. It’s always been like that. I’m so glad that Max called you,” he says, his upside-down stare a dreamy and dazed thing.

Alex feels like his heart is actually being ripped apart by all the hope Michael’s bringing out of him.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Me too.” 

They stay there like that and Michael doesn’t ask more questions, but Alex offers nothing else. He’s not sure he could stand to talk about how he wants them to buy a dog, how he wants them to run away to Colorado for a weekend and forget that aliens exist, or that he really does want to see Michael settled and in a job he loves.

He can’t bear to do that, because he knows that come tomorrow, this will all be gone.

Michael falls asleep with his head in Alex’s lap, face settled with relief and calm. He looks like he’s fully quiet in his head. They stay like that for what feels like hours, but Michael doesn’t wake or move, which means Alex isn’t going anywhere either.

Alex doesn’t move until he feels his phone buzzing. A quick glance at his messages shows something from Liz that should be a relief, but instead, makes him a little sad that he’s going to have to shatter his perfect illusion he’s created.

Alex runs his fingers through Michael’s hair before he sends off the text reply, wishing that he could’ve kept him this innocent and warm and open forever. There’s no way to go back and undo the past, and maybe he doesn’t even want to.

It feels risky, like he could undo the way they feel about each other.

Alex can’t get up to let Liz in, but the door is unlocked and he texts her that she needs to be quiet on her way in. The door creaks a little, but she has something in hand. “Where’s Max?” he whispers, because Alex suspects if anyone knows, it’ll be Liz. 

“He went to Isobel’s after work. He says he didn’t want to make Michael upset, but I’m pretty sure he’s chicken.” 

Alex wishes he didn’t understand so deeply. “I get it. Seeing him like this…” He keeps stroking Michael’s hair, his heart aching for all the moments they missed. “I can’t help thinking about all the things we could’ve done. We could’ve run away to California,” he exhales, as Liz sits on the table and prepares the antidote, “He could’ve stood up to my father that day in the toolshed.”

“And you’d be a pretentious musician or he’d be an experiment,” she replies, because Liz Ortecho always has the answer to everything.

It's depressing, but true. “I did what you did with Maria’s Mom,” he admits quietly. “I told him a story about how things turned out for the best.”

“Did it work?”

“I don’t know, but it made me feel better. Is that how it felt for you?” he asks, as Liz prepares the antidote and slowly injects it into Michael’s arm, so gentle that he doesn’t even stir. Alex doesn’t let go, keeps stroking Michael’s hair as if it had been tough to take. 

Liz caps the empty syringe and gives Alex a sad smile, squeezing his shoulder. “For me, it was a hypothetical, a what-if. I can’t get Rosa back, so I invented a future where I could.” Her eyes slide to Michael, then back to Alex with a pointed look. “Your story can be a roadmap, if you both want.” 

Alex doesn’t think that it’s so easy.

Michael isn’t going to pack up and head to UNM and Alex is way too old to be sleeping in a double in a studio apartment, but there are things that he knows he wants. He just needs to decide if he’s going to go after them.

“How long will this take?” he asks, avoiding her eyes.

“The first time, it was about ten minutes. Let him sleep through it,” she encourages, leaning over to kiss his cheek as she rises to stand. “I’ll let Max know that he should come back now that it’s safe and Michael will be back to normal.” 

“Tell him not to rush.”

Alex feels selfish for it, but he wants as many moments as he can have with Michael alone. Normally, things are so complicated between them and while they’re making strides to understand each other better and be friends, it’s not like when they used to _connect_. He misses that, and right now, he has it. 

“Text me if anything changes,” she says, pressing a last kiss to Alex’s hair. “Good luck.”

Watching the changes start to affect Michael as he twists and turns in his sleep, Alex suspects that he’s going to need it.

* * *

“So,” Michael says, rubbing a palm over his face, once Alex has explained everything that happened and they’re standing face to face.

Alex is staring at it, because it’s like his beard just sort of pushed back into place instantly, not to mention the way his shoulders filled out. It’s a weird thing to witness in a matter of minutes, but the Michael standing in front of him is undeniably an adult and _awake_. “So?”

“Didn’t want to have your wicked way with me?”

Alex gives Michael a disgusted face because he knows that he’s just trying to diffuse a tense situation with a really inappropriate comment, but even for him, that’s a little much. “You were _seventeen_ , Guerin,” he spits out. 

How’d Michael get so close while they were talking? He’s right in Alex’s space, tangling his fingers up in Alex’s shirt and hauling him closer, so close that Alex has a hard time focusing on anything but his lips. “Yeah, well,” he says, words feather-soft so close, “I’m not seventeen anymore. What are you gonna do about it?”

Alex has got at least a dozen ideas.

“You’re not mad at me for lying to you?” he checks, because pretty soon, he’s not going to be able to form complex thoughts.

Michael’s smile is bittersweet, reminiscent of an ache of something that Alex has been feeling all day. “It was a pretty story,” he says. “Even if none of it happened. Well, not all of it,” he admits, because the epic sex part, they both know to be true. “I love you for trying,” he says. “Now, how about you let me start making up for lost time…”

His eyes flick to Max’s bedroom. 

They shouldn’t. They really, really shouldn’t.

Michael ruins that little logical voice in his head when he strips off his shirt. Alex sucks in a breath and shoves at him to get moving before he can think more clearly about what they’re about to do, because Michael’s right. They have a lot to make up for and it’s not like Max is there to notice or care. Right?

(He’s wrong, and even more wrong, but guess what, Alex doesn’t really care when Michael’s naked body is splayed out for him like that on nice sheets)

* * *

“Damn it, Michael!” booms Max when he comes back from Isobel’s. “In my _bed_?” 

“Consider this punishment for asking Alex to babysit! You’re just lucky we were cuddling and not ready for round three.”

“Out! Now!”

The flurry of clothes and bodies passes Max as he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. Maybe he does deserve this for getting Alex to come over and help, but judging from the gleeful and relaxed look on Michael’s face, it looks like the happiness that Michael deserves s finally coming to him.

With that done, Max heads off to spend a worthwhile day burning all his sheets, because all that happiness and come isn’t something he ever wants to think about again while in that bed.


End file.
